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Median household income

Good reads for Feb. 5 2010

by drm on February 5, 2010

Sorry for the two-day absence on the Good Reads. (I just know there are a handful of you who look forward to these short summaries to fill out your day!) I’ve been traveling and working on preparing materials for our quarterly Board meeting next week, so haven’t been filtering things the way I usually do.

Here’s some of the things around the web that have stuck with me over the past couple of days:

The reliable CalculatedRisk takes today’s employment numbers and surrounds them with context and easy-to-digest charts. Click through and enjoy. 6B46D15D-2F69-4C41-A636-D1F3F1E18872.jpg

Alan Patrick gave a thoughtful presentation this week about the role of Social Media in the Enterprise. He cuts through a lot of the froth and looks at how social media tools can drive value in three areas: revenue creation, cost reduction and capital reduction. (via BroadStuff)

Mortgage bankers have been meeting in Washington this week and the dialogue has been interesting. There’s capital in the market to fund the private mortgage securitizations; the caution relates to external regulatory and policy factors. On balance, good signs for the regular and jumbo mortgage markets next year. (via HousingWire)

Interesting paper about the effect of the recession on “Consumption inequality” and “Income inequality.” Moral: Declining asset values reduce consumption, so the decline in housing values has affected consumption by the higher income quintiles to a higher degree. Of course, this reality is offset by the fact that the jobs shed by the economy have been concentrated in less skilled labor pools. (via Economist’s View)

The FriendFinder IPO just couldn’t happen. (via PaidContent)

Is Consumer social media a bad business? Alan Patrick reflects on the views of Bo Peabody. (via Broadstuff)

Research data from Nielsen that looks at how we consume TV content over the Internet. The current model is using the web as a solitary time-shifter. How will it change? (via NielsenWire)

Take a trip to the Mall of the future. A good exploration of how the technologies we currently have will be integrated in the retail experience. Prompts many thoughts about local, media, marketing and context. (via RetailTrafficMag)

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Household income trends, the Value of Money & the relevance of Gen Y’s experiential approach to life

by drm on January 18, 2010

I’ve been catching up today on a few things that I wasn’t able to get to last week. (The week was spent focusing on internal company business.)

I was particularly struck by the juxtaposition of the following chart. The topic: Household income and consumer values.

The first chart shows conventional wisdom: Household incomes have stagnated for the better part of the last 15 years.

hhi pew.jpg

There’s an important trend buried in the numbers: Households are getting smaller. Since household income tracks income for the entire household, the data understates the median income per household member.

real household income charts.jpg

Both trend lines capture the downward wage pressure experiences during the last decade. And, the household size series has certainly increased during the Recession, as more households are forced to combine because of economic pressure.

But the consumer experience of the past decade was that households had more purchasing power relative to the size of the household. The long-term demographic trend suggests that the household size number is going to continue to decline. The result is that more American’s need to earn enough to support themselves, not a broader support group.

values by class pew.jpgFraming that observation is the values that people have in relationship to wealth, career and class. Pew Research Center has done interesting work on quantifying the way the people want to spend time and how they think about wealth and money. People who are in the broad middle generally value their career, have mixed feelings about the importance of wealth and know that the rich are not much different than them, just luckier.

When asked what is most important to them, people in the middle say that they highly value their free time to pursue their passions and interests — their family, a hobby, a vocation.

Work is a path to being able to experience life, not the path to life itself, for most people. As the demographic trend creates more, smaller households, we’ll see a continued emphasis on life as experience. This, incidentally, is a key characteristic of Generation Y. That cohort is only going to get older and more influential.

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